I enjoy reading the Gazette, especially its articles pertaining to mental health. I think your opinion in "How could the Smith case happen in 'good' Canada" was pretty easy to agree with and I'm glad you are bringing her case attention in the Gazette. It is outrageous how she was treated, especially given her mental illness. Even a mentally healthy person subjugated to that much forced isolation would go crazy. She needed to be treated by professionals, not treated as a simple criminal and in a psychiatric ward, not in jail. At the very least she should have been in something like Pinel which happens to be both a mental hospital and prison for the criminally ill.
There was one thing about your article that bothered me. You portray those with Borderline Personality Disorder as people who are desperate for attention to the point of purposely creating chaos for those around them. You also state it is one of the hardest psychiatric disorders to treat. As one who also suffers from BPD, I can tell you these opinions are clearly from an outsider's perspective and it stereotypes the most negatively stereotyped mental illness. You didn't say anything about how it feels to have BPD. Imagine being strapped into an extreme rollercoaster and never being able to get out. This is what everyday feels like because every little thing affects you emotionally. We're highly sensitive people and the smallest trouble can make you feel like life is just too much to bear. Marsha Linehan, an expert on BPD, calls this having your skin turned inside out. Also, BPD is often caused by childhood trauma so you have a past that haunts you and tells you no one can love you. And you can't love yourself because you don't know who you are. The inside of you feels like a black hole, nothing there. So obviously you rarely feel ok. What do people do when they are suffering, especially this severely? They try to get help, draw attention to themselves. People with BPD are not selfish and malicious, we are suffering deeply and reach out for help or express our pain by behaving recklessly and hurting ourselves in a myriad of ways. BPD has the reputation of being hard to treat only because these characteristics of BPD make it hard to respond to traditional treatment. Linehan created DBT, a therapy specifically for BPD but which also helps addiction, eating disorders and more. BPD also requires years of therapy, something not alot of professionals want to commit to. So please, don't create more negativity around BPD than there already is because it is in fact very treatable but also hard to understand from the outside which has created many misconceptions. Especially that we crave attention and do things to ourselves on purpose just for the attention. It is an outward expression of the intense suffering inside, not a simple ploy for attention. I hope I've shown you a more understanding and humane view of BPD, something even most health professionals do not have.
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